Sun Belt Content Strategy

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Ryan Conway

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Control What You Can Control !

Besides the success of conference members on the field, the website is one of the most important tools to drive the brand

While the Sun Belt can’t control member success on the field, they can control how the conference is perceived off the field

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Content Strategy (CS) is a concerted effort to structure and present information in a meaningful useful and relevant context congruent with the user experience.

(CS) should be be managed by A person who’s main focus is content strategy

This doesn’t mean the person makes all the decisions

Collaboration is essential to success

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What I’ve seen by diving into the site

Little to no overarching content strategy No site Vision No defined audience No defined voice/tone No defined system to drive current content No structure to social media No structure to encourage user engagement No structured metrics in place to properly

measure what you want to see

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Source of the Problem

The people that manage the site do an outstanding job, but they have multiple responsibilities pulling them away from doing the job of a full time content strategist

“managing the site is a chore”

With the multiple areas that Sun Belt employees manage, this would be chore for anyone

This makes growing the site impossible !!!

“Few organizations have an overarching strategy that channels all this branded content into a consolidated planning model. In parallel, we see lack of defined leadership for overall orchestration and accountability for content-driven programs.”

Chris Perry, Forbes

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It’s A Process

From What I’ve heard over the past month, it seems everyone knows the website needs to change and become a tool to drive the new Sun Belt brand.

The question is how do you get there and where do you start ?

My goal was to create an actionable plan to grow and move the site forward

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I envision sunbeltsports.org to incorporate creative cutting edge content building user experiences that go beyond just presenting information, but rather evokes an emotional response congruent with the fan experience.

Being a fan means more than just knowing the latest score or press release. The fan has an intense and deep connection with the team he or she loves that transcends a mechanistic exchange with a website.

This being the case, why should the Sun Belt approach their site, the face of their organization in such a manner. Evoke a feeling consistent with the emotions of the fan, then you truly have something, then you can truly connect.

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Starts Here

Evolving the Sun Belt site to engage users and expand the brand reach is a process

This overall content strategy outlined to right addresses how to achieve this

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Unique Content~ content that drives user-engagement, return rates back to site, and is contagious or viral in nature

Connect~ choose and establish social media outlets to promote and increase the contagiousness of content

Drive~ finding ways to push the content, meaning search engine optimization, referral traffic, and social media campaigns

Measure~ its not enough to just have google analytics there’s a process of applying annotations, creating custom metrics to measure what you want! This way you can apply context to the data. Otherwise it’s just numbers

Pivot or Persist~ once all the previous steps are in place you can make a determination if the content you’re creating is doing what you want it to. If its not, pivot and change. If it is, persist !

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What sunbeltsports.org Currently Has

The Sun Belt offers conference news, member news, sports specific news, stats, scores and schedules

people want to see something unique, and for the Sun Belt, that means providing content that people can’t get from broadcasts, press releases etc

“News organizations, and brands for that matter, can no longer produce content in singular, comfortable formats. Question is how to deliver stories in highly engaging ways?”

-Chris Perry, Forbes

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Bounce Rate for Current Articles

Currently Google Analytics shows a 65% bounce rate on articles

Bounce rate shows the user interaction. Higher ratings indicate that people leave and fail to interact with your site/content

Bounce rates should be 20-40 %

The Sun Belt must provide a reason to keep users engaged and coming back to the site

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Initial Strategies to Engage Users

These ideas may not be the answer, but all of them have the same theme.

Provide unique content to drive user-interaction

Provide content that you can control !!! Meaning, content that isn’t at the mercy of ESPN etc.

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Simple Changes

SBCONDEMAND provides truck loads of video content users would want to see

This content is poorly promoted at the moment with a small sbcondemand link at the top of the page

Create a section on the front page with the highest appealing content from SBCONDEMAND

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More Complex Changes

Create a section on the site for user generated content

The goal of this section is to engage users and take the fan experience online stirring up competition amongst fans, coaches, players to represent their institution on the site

The Sun Belt would act as the regulator of content approving the content before it posts to ensure its not representing the conference or member institution negatively

Frictionless publishing:

“Anyone with a smartphone can be a publisher. We’re all media and we’re on all-the-time. Including those who represent brands and brands themselves. This creates new opportunities.”

-Chris Perry, Forbes

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Promote the Sun Belt Insider during Sun Belt broadcasts, on site at Sun Belt venues during games, and on Facebook

Meet with the Student Athlete Advisory Committee to promote players posting content and review guidelines for postings

This type of user content would give people a reason to continuously return back to the site to see the latest

This section of the site would have massive potential to be viral !!!

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What some of this content might look like !!!

2011 New Orleans Bowl Kick from Fan Phonehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuLbgzDjzTE

ULM Warhawk Students Set up the Harlem Shakehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHBBNP7aFXw

Cajun Fans Make a Rap Songhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjhBJEHiRpU

North Texas Basketball Pep Rally from Fan Phonehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNfVyXNm-jo

Arkansas State Football Players do Harlem Shake from player Phone http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Su2Ok5qgxXw

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CNN iReport does this better than anybody

I’m friends with a contact there to get structuring details and provide a starting point

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Content submitted by conference member institutions

This content could be included in “Sun Belt Insider” or made separate

Coordinate with athletic directors, Sun Belt team video coordinators and coaches on posting content from their athletic teams

Types of content that could be included Pre-Season hype videos that are already being created by each team Football hype videos that are made each week, and shown to the team in pre-

game before competition Other video/picture content created by member institutions like new facility

renderings in picture or video format

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Content submitted by conference member institutions

Types of content that could be included

Pre-Season hype videos that are already being created by each team

Football hype videos that are made each week, and shown to the team in pre-game before competition

Other video/picture content created by member institutions like new facility renderings in picture or video format

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Social Media Tools

We all understand that connecting our content to social media has become a “must do” in business today

However, just having the tools and slapping things on here and there does not imply a plan or strategy

Currently only 3.5% of all Sun Belt site traffic is coming from social media !

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Initial Steps: Put Order to The Sun Belt’s Social Media Strategy Keep using Facebook and Twitter

but actually utilize these tools

Research other social media tools to bring into the fold

Employ social media campaigns in accordance with new content strategies

Employ social media management tools like Hootsuite, and Buffer

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Overarching Theme

Get more eyes and visits to expand the Sun Belt brand reach

Three Ways To Do This

1. Increase organic search results in Google, Yahoo, and Bing to drive more visits

2. Increase referral traffic from conference member sites.

3. Increase traffic from social media outlets

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1. ) Increase Organic Search (OS). You began tracking your traffic on August 14, 2012

Since then, SB generated 552,109 in total visits from (OS)

224,333 from

28,605 from

26,718 from

Total~ 279,656

The long and short. Over half your traffic comes from organic search. This is a 100% free audience!! This number can increase significantly

Googles Piece of the Pie on all online (OS)

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1. ) Increase Organic Search Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the

practice of improving and promoting a web site in order to increase the number of visitors the site receives from search engines.

SEO is a process, but the Sun Belt can increase organic search by starting here

Keyword research Permalink structure Link building Link titling

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1.) Increase Organic Search.

Keyword research

“Keyword research is one of the most important, valuable, high return activities in the search marketing field. “

~MOZ, Industry leader in SEO

Through the detective work of puzzling out the market's keyword demand, you not only learn which terms and phrases to target with SEO, but also learn more about your customers as a whole.

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1.) Increase Organic Search (OS). Analyze comprehensive

data along with external factors to create a list of keywords to employ with the site

Use software designed to analyze juice links, and a bunch of other analytical mumbo jumbo to find the keywords to shoot you up organic search rankings

Keyword Research Process

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CASE STUDY

Andrews/Browning Article

No keyword is defined. This article has 12 views most of which are me

As with all your releases the permalink is far too long. Google hates this! Permalinks should be short with the primary keyword

Keywords the Article’s Ranking for

Long story short. No ones searching for the key words this article ranks for and no ones going to find this article on Google. Keyword research can change this !

How Many People are Searching for Two of these Keywords

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CASE STUDY

Andrews/Browning Article

Here are two key words relevant to our content that I found using my software.

The first, “Walter Camp” is found in our article heading but I don’t think it was set as your primary keyword since were ranking on the 8th page in google.

“Walter Camp”

Initially the keyword looks good, local search is high at 6600 per month and the google title competition is 11,000 which is competitive but not overwhelmingly so. Typically a number below 100,000 can be ranked for in time

However, delving deeper into the back end of the word there some things that make it tougher to rank for the quickly

And since this article is time sensitive, an easier ranking keyword should be targeted.

“Walter Camp Award”

While this word has fewer monthly searches the Google title competition is so low, jumping to the first page very quickly and maybe even to # 1 on the search term can be achieved quickly

Now that the keyword is chosen apply it to the title of the article, meta tags, peramalinks and other areas to ensure it ranks in google.

“Walter Camp” vs “Walter Camp Award”

“Walter Camp Award” Competitor Analysis

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2. ) Increase Referral Traffic from Conference Members . Since August 14th 2012, 61,047 of the 552,109 visits

came directly from conference member sites.

That’s roughly 11% of all the Sun Belt Site Traffic

While there are other ways to increase traffic from conference members, in the immediate future the Sun Belt can employ a tactic that will immediately increase referral traffic

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2. ) Increase Referral Traffic from Conference Members . The logo is on most member sites but its

not uniform

Set a standard for the Sun Belt logo size on each member site that links to ours

Use logo with with Sun Belt image and name

The alternate logo can be used with the school’s colors as long as the sun belt name is prominent

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2. ) Increase Referral Traffic from Conference Members . The logo must be “above the fold”

The most valuable real estate is everything “above the fold” on a web page

“Above the fold” refers to everything before you have scroll

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2. ) Increase Referral Traffic from Conference Members . The Nielsen Norman Group did an eye tracking study

examining 57,453 eye fixations over the course of the study

The blue dots represent the number of eye fixations and size of blue dots represents the time spent on the area.

User viewing time was distributed as follows during the study

Above the fold: 80.3% Below the fold: 19.7%

Long story short…get the logo above the fold

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3.) Increase Traffic from Social Media Outlets . A recent Forrester report on how

consumers found websites in 2012 shows that social media is catching up with search,

Facebook= 32% of online discoveries Search= 52% of online discoveries

This number is up from 25% in 2011.

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3.) Increase Traffic from Social Media Outlets . Facebook referrals to the website since the Sun Belt

employed Google Analytics August 14 are at 7,068 of the 552,109 total visits

Facebook is only accounting for 1.3 % of total traffic

Twitter referrals are at 12,319

Roughly 2.2 % of total traffic

Bottom Line: only 3.5 % of site traffic is coming from social media

This number illustrates little to nothing is being done to utilize social media No strategy or structure is in place beyond slapping a

post/picture up here and there MASSIVE ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT !

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3.) Increase Traffic from Social Media Outlets .

Pay by tweet/like Choose what you want the user to pay for

by tweet, be it video, a discount code for the SBC store, or whatever

Use services like pay with a tweet to walk you through putting the application on the website

When the user clicks the icon they are prompted to post to their Facebook wall

As soon as they post they get the content

Then, watch the viral effect!

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3.) Increase Traffic from Social Media Outlets .

Sweepstakes Campaigns We offer gear, tickets or whatever

would garner lots of interest

The fan likes our page for an entry into sweepstakes

Once the fan shares, if his or her facebook friends end up liking the page the original fan gets another entry into the sweepstakes for each friend liking the campaign

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If You Can’t Measure You Can’t Manage it ! Measuring is one of the most important

steps in content strategy

This means more than just having Google Analytics in place

The Sun Belt has Google Analytics but doing nothing with it. Right now it’s just a bunch of Numbers!

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If You Can’t Measure You Can’t Manage it ! Look at it this way

This would be like a football team having loads of opponent film for their game this but not having inputted formations, down and distance, yardline, fronts, stunts, coverages, etc

They would be making decisions to their game plan with out truly know anything about their opponent

the annotations in the film add context to it

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Bring Order to The Data Just with football film, annotations

in (Google Analytics) add context to the data

for instance if you launched a new campaign, set of content, application, social media tool. Creating annotations in GA will give you the ability to apply meaning to the data instead of just seeing a graph of numbers

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What Needs to Be Done in Google Analytics Create a structure that specifies how annotations will be used

in Google Analytics

Go back when the Sun Belt started tracking in (GA) and create annotations for past events to start adding context to the data

Establish primary and secondary goals in (GA) that correspond with site vision

Create new metrics and that fall in line with these goals and the new content being created

Segment visitors, set filters and run reports to view progress

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Social Media Measurement More in depth tools are available to manage

and measure social media outlets

Hootsuite provides a more complete solution that allows you to schedule updates and monitor conversations,

Buffer has superior scheduling flexibility over Hootsuite because you can designate very specific scheduling times and change patterns throughout the week.

Many people use both Hootsuite (to listen) and Buffer (to schedule)

I would recommend using both as well

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Is it working or not ? Pretty simple here, stick with

what works, nix what doesn’t

Obviously, how well you measure will determine whether you pivot or persist

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You Need A Person Dedicated to This Task!

The change of the Sun Belt web platform provides a perfect opportunity to advance the Sun Belt’s web presence and to start implementing content strategy

You need a Chief Content Officer (CCO), or Content Strategist who’s main responsibility is dedicated to developing the site content strategy and choosing content development standards

This person ensures content is structured to provide user-optimized content that encourages user engagement

This person is abreast on the latest in content strategy and social media strategy to ensure the company stays on par or ahead of what their competitors are doing

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Why You Can’t Afford to Wait

“media we use to form opinions continues to morph into a hard-to-categorize-mix of traditional, personal, shared, commentary-rich, experiential, remixed media.”

-Chris Perry, Forbes

Those who can’t capitalize on this “new world of marketing” will get left behind

This is the face of the Sun Belt